Canadian Anti-Hate Network
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Monday’s episode of the Canadaland podcast features a conversation with the Canadian Anti Hate Network’s Hazel Woodrow on her latest report on LifeSiteNews. She sat down with host Jesse Brown to talk about her reporting on the site, its explicit condemnation of LGBTQ2+ Canadians, and just a few pieces of their incredibly incendiary content.
From comparing queer sex to the slaughter of farm animals to warning about “homosexuals on the prowl” in the US military to a conspiracy-minded archbishop telling Steve Bannon that “Trump is fighting pedosatanism” -- LifeSiteNews has published many shocking headlines since anti-abortion lobby group Campaign Life Coalition founded it 25 years ago.
“If you look at the articles that they print and the ways that they describe protected groups, they disagree with their existence almost,” Woodrow says during the interview. “Describing particularly gay men as having this radical propensity for sexual violence.”
In a conversation ranging from funding sources, social media engagement, to how it finds its way into inboxes around the country, the interview is a look into how the message broadcasted by LSN is not reflective of Catholicism or Christianity writ large.
“I think probably the traditionalist teaching that LifeSiteNews reflects most broadly is the belief in there being an existential conflict between the church and the world,” Hazel said. “There being this sense of spiritual warfare, and criticism and concern of the church being of the world. The church allegedly changing policies to fit more with the times, when their understanding is that the church is absolutely called to not be of the world and to be against secularism.”
LifeSiteNews was founded in 1997 by a Canadian anti-abortion lobbying group. According to their US tax returns, they publish approximately 4,000 articles a year. The organization says it relies primarily on donations to “spread truth, defeat lies, and save lives.” In 2018, the US arm received 1.6 million in contributions and grants, nearly double what it received in 2015.
With headlines featuring statements like “Homo-tyranny is upon us,” and accusations of Obama transforming the US military into “a playground for sexual predators,” the site denigrates advocacy for LGBTQ rights, instead framing it as support for an “infamous crime against nature,” as the “American military as becoming a cesspool of American degeneracy.”
Most recently, the site featured a number of articles encouraging its readers to attend the January 6, Washington DC protests over the US election. While the site made no calls for violence, the rhetoric helped set the tone for the day’s infamous events.
“It is said that death concentrates the mind. The chants from the massive crowd will surely concentrate the mind of the Republican senators as they realize the people are watching,” wrote Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, in an LSN blog post ahead of the event. “If they hold the line they will win plaudits from the crowd. But should they vote against the most popular president in recent history they will be committing political suicide.” LSN co-founder and president Steve Jalsevac declined to be interviewed by Canadaland, however many of his comments to us are included alongside Woodrow’s reporting.
